How we test

All individual stain tests are performed on swatches with the applicable stain. We measured the recommended amount of detergent for a normally soiled load and used this to wash the test loads at a temperature of 20⁰C.

For this test, both the front- and top-loader were set on “normal” wash cycles — the type of wash cycle an average consumer is likely to choose to wash an everyday load.

After washing, we measured how much dirt was removed from each swatch. We did this with a spectrophotometer (which measures how much light reflects off the swatches). It’s more accurate than the human eye.

Each load contains two swatches of each stain and each detergent was tested twice.